No role for Elena Poniatowska in AMLO’s administration

Mexico City — Writer Elena Poniatowska arrived at the Col. Roma offices of the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and told reporters that she has supported the official “since he was born.”

But she also told reporters that at 86 years old, she won’t be part of his administration.

“I already have a leg in my coffin, what would he ask me to do?” said Poniatowska, in Spanish.

Poniatowska said that the spirit behind the success of López Obrador is very exciting, full of hope, “as there has never been before.”

“It is a spirit of great hope in the future for all,” she said before meeting with López Obrador.

Poniatowska, who lives in Mexico City and has family in Mérida, supports government decentralization so that not everything is concentrated in Mexico City.

On the proposal to turn the official residence of Los Pinos into a cultural space, she did not comment.

The journalist and human rights activist has visited Los Pinos only once, “a thousand years ago,” in her words, at the invitation of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. She dined with the president, the late writer Carlos Monsiváis and Jesusa Rodríguez.